Monday, December 31, 2012

New Year's Eve Tragedy

the smoke... the flames... the nightmare.....

Trapped !!!

December 31, 1955 started out as any other day for the Duper family. They had plans to move to another apartment the next month because the building they were living in was scheduled to be razed and replaced by a housing project. They never made the move and they never saw 1956.

434 Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn, NY went up in flames. Teresa Duper, my 2nd great-grandmother, a widow, was being helped out of the apartment by her eldest son, Steven. She would have made it out alive but she turned back. She went back for her youngest son, Gerald whose bedroom was in the back of the apartment. Teresa and Gerald were both found in the bathroom. I might not be writing this if my mother who was spending the school recess with her great-grandmother hadn't gone home the day before because she wasn't feeling well.

Teresa Devine was born November 4, 1875 in Stuyvesant Falls, NY (Columbia county) to Patrick Devine and Emily Sheldon both of Ireland. She married Stephen Duper, an Austrian man and had five children. Her youngest child, Gerald never married and her oldest son, Stephen was separated from his wife, Mary which is probably why he was living with his mother.